Using a 3D printer for something other than printing Army Men

The explosion of 3D printers is simply amazing. From the humble start of MakerBot to the cool new high-resolution resin printers from Formlabs, 3D printing is certainly changing the way we design and manufacture new products. But for the home hobbyist, after you print a few Army men and a key chain here and there, what do you do? Well, I finally came across a problem that 3D printing was the perfect solution.

I am a huge home theater nut and you can't curl up on the couch for a movie without popcorn. The 'gold standard' of popcorn machines is Gold Medal. The popcorn popper I purchased from Gold Metal is built like a tank, except for one slight problem, the plastic hinge on the front plexiglass doors broke after many years of use.

The hinge is supposed to have a plastic 'spike' sticking straight up that the door hinges below slips over.

Here is what the door should like:

The sales team over at Gold Medal was very helpful, but unfortunately, since we have an older model, they no longer make the hinge piece. They did however say a replacement hinge from another model may fit, but with shipping would be around $40. That's when a lightbulb went off, why don't I just 'print' a new hinge?

Our local library in Carroll County Maryland has a new 3D printing lab that has great prices on printed items. They recommend using a web-based design tool from Tinkercad. As a web developer, I'm amazed at what can be done in a web browser today and this software looks great and is easy to use. After using just a basic ruler with millimeter-scale, I recreated the broken hinge piece:

I downloaded the 3D file from Tinkercad to a USB drive and drove over to our local library. They have a Lulzbot printer that uses basic PVC stock, but due to the wear and tear of the hinge, I opted for stronger ABS plastic which had to be sent to another library branch. Within in about a week, the parts came back, below is a comparison of the broken hinges and the newly printed parts:

Straight off the printer, they had a little support material, but it easily came off by hand and then cleaned up with a razor blade.

This is a shot of the attached hinge to the popcorn machine. I was somewhat surprised (and proud) that the screw holes lined up perfectly the first time, no adjustments with a drill bit required.

After the hinges were installed, the moment of the truth, the door slipped right over the hinge pins, no problems. So for $2.50 and a little time with Tinkercad I was able to 'machine' my own hinge replacement. I have officially been bitten by the 3D printer bug, now I look around the house and say, new knobs on the stove, no problem ( although that might not pass the wife test ).

Special thanks to the people over at Gold Medal they were very responsive and tried their best to find the right replacement part. Check out their website they have some really cool machines like this monster for movie theaters. Also thanks to the staff at the Eldersburg and Westminster library branches in Carroll County Maryland, it is really great to see our library system providing this great service to the community.

Time to throw in my favorite movie of all time The Matrix and pop some corn!